My review of "Her Sweetest Downfall" by Rebecca Hamilton.

Her Sweetest Downfall by Rebecca Hamilton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An enchanting, magical tale full of mystique, imagination and a unique twist on Romance.

Her Sweetest Downfall is a prequel to The Forever Girl series, but could be read as a standalone book. The story was structured in the traditional model, with a beginning, middle and end, so no cliffhangers here! Which was satisfying.

The story opens up with Ophelia, who wakes up one day with "Mark of the Serpent" on her neck--a painful wound that winds up being more than such. On her way to deliver a letter, she encounters a man named Ethan, who informs her that their encounter was not by chance and soon enough, Ophelia learns that the Mark of the Serpent is a sign of a calling...a call of duty, to work for the Universe! I was immediately hooked after the first few pages, and the mystery never lets up either.

Ethan guides Ophelia on her journey, who is on the brink of a new spiritual awakening and doesn''t know why. Everything is thrown on her ever so suddenly, and I felt the character struggle with her new sense of purpose as well as her newfound fears and abilities. As she embarks on a world previously unknown to her, she begins to encounter odd-worldly beings, called, Elementals, who take on the traits of Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. Rebecca Hamilton imagines characters and locales so rich, her writing is superbly detailed and I could sense the characters breathe on the page, and I could feel the atmosphere that felt straight out of a Tim Burton film.

Throughout their adventure, mistrust creeps in around the peripheral, as Ethan's true motives are uncertain; until the latter portion of the story of course. His ability to abstain from forming an emotional attachment to Ophelia contributes to this mistrust, as Ophelia is thrown into a mission, a mission that winds up being about one of the most fundamental of all our journeys in life--the mission to find ourselves, to find our purpose in life, and most of all, to find the answers to the question of all questions-- what it means to be human.



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